


The Trials of Purgatory

by argle_fraster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Gore, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-05
Updated: 2012-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 11:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Purgatory tests them - Castiel's fear is having to put Dean back together again, over and over and over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trials of Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> Not dead. Trying to find fic inspiration again. Short little tumblr thing.

The vampire tore Dean's throat apart and Castiel found the creature smeared with Dean's blood, smelling of decay and rot and _righteousness_ mingled within, in the worst sort of conglomeration he'd ever come across. After he killed the beast, he knelt over Dean's body and sewed up his throat, breathing blood back into the gasping veins.

"The hell," Dean gasped, when he awoke, eyes bright and wide and laced with pain, even though Castiel tried to take the brunt of it himself.

"Pay it no mind," Castiel told him. "You cannot die here; there is no death that is permanent for living beings within this space."

Dean looked troubled all the same, and did not speak for a long while. Castiel vowed to pay more attention on watch, so that the same thing would not happen again, but he should have known better than to expect to outwit a land of monsters.

\--

The demon had carved out Enochian symbols in Dean's stomach when Castiel found them again, a distorted prayer that more closely resembled an anguished plea than a blessed wish. Castiel should not have felt so much pleasure in banishing the creature - and even then, he knew the action was largely ceremonial, for he could not send the demon any farther than Purgatory's farthest bounds. Still, it helped.

Dean was groaning in agony as Castiel replaced the pound of flesh that had been loosened from his body, carefully pressing the pieces back into place and sealing them with his fingers curved over the sheen of Dean's skin.

"You said I couldn't die," Dean rasped out between chapped, torn lips.

"You can't," Castiel confirmed. "But your mind still believes you can, and that is why you still feel that you are."

Dean laughed, a decidedly mirthless sound. "What a crock of shit. This place is the worst."

Castiel did not voice his agreement out loud. Purgatory was testing them; Purgatory was _only_ a test, a perpetual test, until the soul gave in and became the very thing that hunted it. It was a test with only one possible outcome, unless Castiel found the portal that allowed them to escape the cycle.

He helped Dean climb shakily to his feet, trying to ignore the pain he saw flash across the other man's face.

"I believe I may be close to finding our way out," Castiel said.

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Dean replied, and said nothing more.

\--

The worst by far was the Wendigo.

It tore through Dean's human flesh for hours before Castiel tracked them down and returned, with bits of the man strewn across the forest floor and the monster itself halfway through devouring one of Dean's arms. Piecing the man back together was almost worse than when he had done so in Hell, and it should never have been. Castiel could not find part of Dean's skeletal structure amidst the gore, and so he took a rib of his own and fashioned it inside.

If Dean noticed the difference when he returned to consciousness, he did not say anything about it; Castiel noticed the throbbing absence only because it was the worst and best sort of ache.

"If we aren't really here," Dean said, slowly, testing out his wrists again as if the actions were strangely foreign to him, "then why does it keep happening?"

"It is a test," Castiel told him.

Dean's eyes were hooded when he replied, "A test of what?"

"What we are afraid of," Castiel said. "This place takes our worst fear and makes it real."

"And we only feel it because our minds think we do?"

Castiel hung his head. The throb in his side grew more pronounced. "I'm sorry, Dean. I don't know what you are seeing or feeling. This is my fear that you are being forced through over and over again."

For a long time, Dean said nothing. They sat side by side on the rocks overlooking the expanse of forest that led to nothingness that looped over behind them again - there was no sun, and therefore no sky, but the space above them was dotted with stars because Dean expected it to be.

"This is your fear," Dean repeated, sounding strained.

"Yes."

Castiel could not read the other man's face when Dean turned to him. "And why are we being shanghai-ed into this shit again?"

"Because we are both too human to believe in anything else," Castiel admitted.

Dean blew out a long breath that turned to crystal on the breeze. "Shit."

Castiel thought of his lost brethren, of the tenuous bond he had only started to rediscover, of the knot of guilt that had taken up residence in his abdomen and refused to leave, churning his gut over and over again. "Yes," he agreed.

"If this is your fear," Dean said, after a long while, voice very quiet, "then what's mine?"

"I don't know."

Dean's hands scraped against the denim of his jeans. "Are you going to put me back together again?"

"Every time," Castiel promised.


End file.
